


Choir of Furies in Your Head

by patcot



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Better Than Canon, Bittersweet, F/F, Gen, both ships are implied but It's Complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patcot/pseuds/patcot
Summary: Even now she could hear the muffled albeit unforgiving roar of the storm, the inexorably painful sound of glass shattering and wood cracking outside, the relentless aching of her head painting red hues on her vision and a deafening ringing in her ears.Even now, Max didn’t know if this was possible.But she had to try.-An alternative, slightly happier ending to Episode 5.





	Choir of Furies in Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Replaying the original game after Before the Storm wasn't any easier than the first time, on the contrary.  
> This work is meant to be cathartic if nothing else, but I still hope you enjoy my take on a different ending and a somewhat personal interpretation of events. The title is from the beautifully heartwrenching Spanish Sahara.

Max Caulfield was running out of **time**.

The irony of such a statement, while undesirably bittersweet, is not entirely lost on her – instead, it elicits a sharp exhale that follows an almost entirely subdued grin, and it takes all her strength not to allow her knees to give in and sink to the floor right then and laugh until no more air fills tired lungs.

Instead, fingers part in the air in front of her, clawing at something indescribably out of reach, causing the piece of debris that comes crashing through the window to rewind, yet there was still not enough time.

One week, seven days, one hundred and sixty-eight hours, and still not enough time.

A maddening smile gives way to more dryly constricted laughter, and still not enough time.

Max Caulfield was _slipping_.

And the piercing screech of the wind outside fueled her lack of clarity even further, the intensity of the storm a match for her own whirlwind of thoughts, and she’s practically in a daze as she takes a few tentative steps through the hallway of the dormitory and rewinds, rewinds, rewinds.

She faintly registers sharp intakes of breath, strained sobs, the metallic tang of blood swirling around her tongue provokingly, and then a hand finally grasps at the handle to her room and she knows she’s unquestionably shaking from head to toe, streaks of warmth trailing down the cold numbness of her face.

Max Caulfield was b r e a k i n g.

Sleep deprivation will do that to a person, she supposed. And coupled with witnessing so much death and destruction for the past week, so many _what if_ s answered by the delectable impracticality of multiple universes, so many shifts that made her question her grip on reality itself and _hell_ , so many variables that she’d utterly, undoubtedly, undeniably **fucked up** ; well, that was enough to break.

Blue eyes scan the room around her, the multitude of photographs vastly stretched out along the wall near her bed, and when her phone rings she could’ve sworn the vibration came from her own legs trembling with leftover adrenaline. It could be anyone calling in the middle of this storm, whether or not to say goodbye was a question better left unanswered.

“Max”, comes the strained voice beside her, and she has to stop for a moment and wonder if she’s ever felt this dizzy before.

It was a bad idea. Max had known this as soon as it materialized in her brain. She had worked so very hard to save her best friend countless times from what felt like the wrath of the fucking _universe_ itself; they had been safe in the cliff, alive, and _together_ , and everyone else was going to die. Joyce and Kate and David and Dana and Warren and Frank and Victoria and Nathan and Jefferson and Rachel and Chloe and –

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

The tension in Chloe’s voice does little to bring Max out of her stupor – every thought bouncing around the throbbing of her skull revolving around her inability to stop all this _death_ , what with a pounding head and a clouded sight and the warmth of her own blood around her lips.

Even now Chloe was hurt, a gash near her eye and a bleeding shin, bruises and scraped limbs, all of which to bring her here, to her dorm, to her pictures, to the very last hope she had of stopping this.

Even now she could hear the muffled albeit unforgiving roar of the storm, the inexorably painful sound of glass shattering and wood cracking outside, the relentless aching of her head painting red hues on her vision and a deafening ringing in her ears.

Even now, she didn’t know if this was possible.

“I don’t know what might happen, Chloe. Every time I tried this I made things worse. I keep making things worse” that last sentence rolls off her lips again, and again, and again, claws at her gut and sends a wave of sudden nausea cursing through her whole body.

It was a shot in the dark, to say the least. The blue butterfly, her power, the ghostly deer, Rachel’s death – that couldn’t possibly have all been a coincidence, could it? The deer had led her to the lighthouse, undoubtedly wishing to keep the two of them safe, but what if it hadn't been there in the first place? What if she could stop herself from getting this power in the first place? What if -

“I know - I know... Fuck, it doesn’t _matter_ , Max – you have to try. You’re the only one who can stop this.”

Max’s hand crashes against the sweat on her forehead, brushing away muddy strands of hair that had stuck together, rubbing at her temples, tugging at the numbness in her skull, and for a moment all she can do is stand there and **wince**. The reality of the situation hits her entire body all at once, freezing it in place as though she’s stuck in time altogether, trapped within one of her shots. Chloe is quick to notice this, grabbing her by the shoulders, forcing their gazes to meet, attempting to stir something – _anything_ within her.

“I… I know you can do so much, Max. You’ve helped Kate and.... you’ve helped me. You’re good and you’re kind and you’re the best damn person I’ve ever known, and you made me smile like I haven’t done in years. You’re the only reason I have for being in this hellhole.”

Max blinks at this, slowly attempting to process the raw emotion laced in those words, and she finds herself muttering something under her breath, something incoherently breathless, and Chloe merely shakes her head down at her with a nervous albeit desperate grin.

“You can do this. Whatever reality we end up in… I’m just so fucking glad I met you in the first place. No one can take that away from us.”

And at once nothing matters but the reassurance of the smile on her best friend’s lips, and they’re downstairs in Chloe’s backyard trading snippets of hopes for the future, and they’re in Max’s living room holding hands and playing superheroes, and they’re in Chloe’s room soaked in chlorine holding hands and mulling over a kiss, and they’re in Max’s dorm with a storm outside holding hands and locking lips.

“I’ll make things right, Chloe.”

Messy breaths dissolve against each other again and she can taste the salt of her tears, the rough tang of smoke against her tongue, the warmth of their embrace, Chloe’s fingers digging against her back, and Max knows this is the only way.

It’s quiet between them for what feels like an eternity, soothing gazes speak louder than any words ever could, fingers squeeze against each other until they’re pale, and Max knows this is the only way.

“And Max, whatever happens… I can’t think of a better way for this to end.”

It was difficult to register everything that happened next – the safety of the wall crumbling down to pieces, the pictures flying across the room until she grabbed hold of one in particular, Chloe’s entire body wrapped around her tighter than ever. All that mattered was that picture – and the sudden urge to laugh at the fact that everything came down to one of her fucking selfies in Seattle is so very strong she doesn’t fully realize the intensity of the wind, the foundation of the building crashing down, or her best friend’s terrified words flying past her lips.

She focuses on the lines of the photo, the colors dotting her own skin, the lack of confidence in her expression, the lonely corner of her room in Seattle, and barely registers everything falling apart between them, the booming and the screeching and the cacophony of destruction.

She focuses, and the end of the world passes her by.

 

* * *

 

The world is suddenly quiet all around, and there is only the warmth of the white light tugging at her consciousness. The blurry splotches of her surroundings make it difficult to be certain, yet flipping open the phone in her pocket to eye the date in the corner confirms another successful trip through time.

Seattle. One year ago.

She made it.

There’s barely any room for her to maneuver as the burning colors contour a physical constraint that keeps her in place. Even if she wanted nothing but to get inside a car and drive to Arcadia to take care of things herself, she knows that much isn’t possible with how far back she’s traveled.

Instead, she dials the contact she’d been avoiding for a handful of years, and the anxiety begins eating away at her bones.

Beep.

Because Chloe could be doing anything on a Friday afternoon.

Beep.

There was no reason for her to pick up.

Beep.

It could very well have been all in vain.

Beep.

“…Max?”, tries the voice on the other end with a dire mixture of apprehension and relief, and Max is laughing again, whether out of apprehension or relief she’s not entirely sure herself.

“Chloe” is all she can muster, voice cracking with emotion. Blue eyes close to darken the blurry, dizzy contours of the room and steady a faint breath, “I’ve missed you so much.”

Silence, followed by an incredulous smile that was every bit palpable on the other end.

“Yeah, me too”, and a part of her knows Chloe is holding back just how _long_ it’s been since they’d spoken, probably trying not to toss it angrily her way and give away just how much she’s longed for this reunion, how badly she needed to hear her friend’s voice on the other side. “So, how much ass is Seattle sucking that you’re bored enough to call me out of nowhere?”

Chloe had been expertly deflecting emotions with humor for as long as they knew each other, and Max would be damned if she didn’t want to forcefully push her way past that defense and let her know just how much she meant to her, but that’s not why she called.

“Chloe, this is gonna sound crazy, but I need you to listen.”

For her part, Chloe just grins. It’s impossible to hide the giddiness in her voice because today of all days she’s a lonely mess of one too many beers and nobody to talk to but the brick walls surrounding her. 

“You need me to help you bury a body? Shit Max, you’re all grown up now.”

“Chloe, _please_.” And there’s a sense of urgency in her voice, one that causes Chloe to grow completely silent for what feels like a full minute, frowning at the walls of her hideout. “What I’m about to tell you is crazy and fucked up and I need you to trust me.”

“…You’re weirding me out dude, is everything okay?”

Max takes a deep breath she didn't realize she'd been holding until now. There was no easy way to say this, so she just does.

“I need you to keep Rachel Amber safe.”

And Chloe scoffs at that, incredulously, and perhaps a bit defensively, and Max has no way of knowing that name is one of the reasons why she’d downed three of those beers that day.

“Uh, sure… How do you even know Rachel?”

Max grips the phone tighter in her clutch, shaking her head, voice strained and cracking.

“Six months from now… she’s going to die, Chloe. And that’s – everything is gonna spin out of control and I think it’s all related to her, so if we stop it from happening then –”

Chloe cuts her off, abrupt and sharp.

“What the _hell_ , Max?”

 Max winces and braces herself to try again.

“Chloe, listen. You're the only one who can stop this”, it's a feeble and desperate attempt at mirroring those comforting words, but to no avail.

“You don’t fucking call me for three years and the first time you do you don’t even bother to ask me how I’ve been?” and Chloe’s tone could cut through glass, sharp and jagged with an abrasive resentfulness that's been forcefully locked away for far too long.

“I know I fucked up but _please_ , trust me. I don’t have a lot of time. I can’t keep doing this” as if on cue, a lukewarm wave of dizziness hits her like a bullet and she allows her legs to collapse, sitting down on the floor, breathless and motionless and every bit hopeless.

“Yeah? Me neither. I don’t know what to tell you, Max. Three _fucking_ years and all you’ve got is a fucking prank. Have a nice life in Seattle.”

“You just got your tattoo last week, a skull with green vines and pink flowers and blue butterflies,” and she exhales at this, biting the irony underneath her tongue, “and Rachel was there with you, she got a dragon on her right ankle – it’s her second one, the star on her wrist was a promise she hasn’t kept yet”.

Chloe had let her in on this, of course. Little things that would undoubtedly prove Max was telling the truth to her past self, little details of her intricate relationship with Rachel that Max couldn’t possibly have known otherwise because she hadn’t been there for her. And hell if that realization didn't become progressively more painful as Chloe described some of those moments, as her voice softened with reminiscence dipped into regret; and although part of her knew she had _no_ right to ever feel that way, Max couldn't really keep those feelings of bitter envy from creeping up on her, either.

She continues, barely pausing to catch her breath.

“You’re going to run away to LA together. You kissed her after a school play, you spent that weekend camping in the woods together – you still have my mixtape, and that mural we drew in your backyard and… Chloe, I’ve seen you die. I’ve seen Rachel’s body. Please trust me, this is real.”

The silence is heavy, save for a few of her own muffled sniffles and ragged breaths against the speaker. Silence brought its own set of uncertainties to the situation, silence was what almost killed Chloe for five years without her father or her best friend by her side, silence would be the death of everyone in Arcadia Bay, unless –

“There’s... there’s no way you could make that shit up… how could you know that?”

Chloe doesn’t want to believe her. That much was evident. She doesn’t want to, she can’t afford to and hell, if the roles were reversed, Max was pretty sure she _wouldn’t_ believe this herself.

But she had to try.

“April 22, 2013. Whatever you do – don’t let Rachel go to this Vortex Club party. Stay away from it, please. Stay away from Nathan Prescott, and – and Mark Jefferson. Tell David about them. Please, please just be careful, keep Rachel safe.”

“I – this is fucking _insane_ , Max.”

“And Chloe? Please call me. I want to hear all about you. I can’t do this without you, I can’t stand to lose you and – I know I fucked up, and I’m the worst friend and I don’t deserve you, but we don’t deserve to die.”

It takes Chloe a while to reply but her voice is much softer when she finally does.

“No one’s gonna die – Max just... Calm down. Tell me everything.”

The vignette of her surroundings begins to close in on her as Max lets out a shaky exhale.

“I will”.

 

* * *

 

 

The ringing in her ears was enough to deafen, the flash of white searing light was enough to blind, the pounding in her head was enough to burst it open with a cracking sound that rang down her spine and soaked her bones in a shockwave of tremors.

When she opens her eyes, she’s surprised it hasn’t.

The sun warms her skin in greeting. She can feel the autumn breeze giving way to a shiver while the ocean glimmers, fingers grasping at the wood of a bench underneath her fingers and –

They’re alive.

“Whoa, hey – you’re bleeding.”

And then there’s that voice, softening the ache, clouding her eyes, curling her lips into a bloody smile.

Chloe’s breathing, Chloe’s alive, Chloe’s furrowing her brow in concern, Chloe’s wrapping an arm around tense shoulders and rubbing circles at an exhausted back, Chloe’s _warm_.

“I’m fine”, but she wasn’t, she was strained and dizzy and aching as if all the fatigue of the previous week finally caught up to her and her body was one blow away from caving in.

But she was, because they were _alive_ , and there was no wind screeching against her ears, no storm when she eyed the horizon, no hurricane looming in the distance.

“Spacing out with a nosebleed? Save your dirty thoughts for later, Caulfield” she’s vaguely aware of the shit-eating grin on Chloe’s face and the sparks dancing around her blue eyes, and her entire body softens at once, shoulders sagging into the warm touch. Chloe’s alive, Chloe’s smiling, Chloe’s happy. “We should head back, get you checked up. You look like ass all of a sudden, dude.”

The words leave Max’s mouth before she can begin to process them, an impulsive thought at the back of her mind clawing at her skull to be set free until it simply rolls off her tongue breathlessly as she shakes her head at her best friend's words.

“What happened to Rachel?”

And then it seems to dawn on her. The conversation from over a year ago. The sheer panic in Max’s voice, the oddly specific request, the eeriness of it all.

The silence.

Chloe’s brow is knit with apprehension, lips parting a few times as if searching for the right words to say, as if to confirm her own suspicions about Max's suddenly odd behavior and its relation to that phone call, but she seems to decide against it. Max would have to bring it up later and explain everything that had happened.

“I... I don’t know. It’s been a while since I heard from her.”

The words are coated in nostalgia, yet they’re bitter rather than sweet, depressed rather than disappointed, and Max can feel her best friend sigh wearily against her.

Chloe Price was broken.

Thin lips encircle a lit cigarette as Chloe pulls away from their embrace, leaning forward to let her arms rest against ripped jeans. Long fingers reach for the breast pocket of her dark jacket, retrieving a folded postcard that Max can't quite make out the details of.  

“She’s… gone?”

Oh, not again. The faintness is back, submerging her head into a multitude of hypotheses. Her thoughts race towards another timeline where Chloe was still suffering even with her father by her side, and perhaps she had managed to change things for the worse once more. There's a sudden urge to fish for her phone and make sure she's still herself and everyone else is just as alive as the two of them, who knows what kind of ripples her actions had caused in time.

Not again.

But Chloe merely lifts an eyebrow at this.

“You sure you’re okay?”

The dry lump she’d been attempting to swallow remains in place with a threat to choke her constricted throat, and she clenches her jaw in a barely effective effort to keep a soft voice stable enough not to crack, gaze darting towards the postcard with a nod.

"Can I see?”

Chloe frowns, then softens, then frowns. Fingers grip the paper harder in her clutch. The heaviness of the silence lingers in the air once more, the smoke of a drawn cigarette threatens to make her disappear in a blue blur, and Max can see the pain shimmering vividly in her eyes. It’s somewhat akin to the all the other times she had spoken of Rachel –  lips pursed in a tight line around her cigarette, blue orbs gleaming on the verge of tearing up, her entire posture slouching as if to guard herself against the burst of ache that was so very evident in her expression.

Chloe Price had slipped.

And while that much was evident even in the way she seemed to shelter confined feelings that peered through a cautiously polished mask of abrasiveness, Max didn't quite understand how saving the blonde's life could have possibly still ended with Chloe in such a state. And she probably never would. Not for a while anyway, not until she was comfortable enough to ask and Chloe was easeful enough to tell. Perhaps, in a way, it wasn't her place to know.

For now, she merely focuses on the first few words written on the back of the postcard as it is tilted her way.

> ‘Chloe, I hope you can forgive me.’

And at once, it all clicks into place.

Chloe was alone again.

Rachel had left, but she hadn’t followed.

As if they had a mind of their own, fingers instantly parted in the air, grasping at something unnaturally out of reach; but she doesn’t feel the blur of time passing her by, the translucent ghost-like silhouettes of their other selves, the rush of motion against her body.

Max can’t rewind. Not this time.

Perhaps exhaustion merely pulled its strings, yet a part of her knew this all had to be related somehow. And although Max would never truly understand why or how, what little clarity her fatigued mind allowed was enough to allow her to realize that somehow, someway, her power had been connected to Rachel Amber all along.

She tries a few more times, as if to prove the veracity of a theory that would sound all but absurd to anyone else, and all of them are in vain.

So those fingers lock into her best friends’ instead, and squeeze reassuringly.

“She’s okay, Chloe.”

Rachel had left, but she hadn’t died.

Chloe was no longer alone again.

“I know.”

And Max Caulfield had all the time in the world.


End file.
